


Royal Responsibilities (a Sanders Sides ghost story)

by secretglittersauce



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Angst, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Creepy, Creepypasta, Ghosts, Horror, M/M, Multi, Whump, platonic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 21:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15566472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretglittersauce/pseuds/secretglittersauce
Summary: Dedicated ghost hunter, Virgil, enters an abandoned amusement park in search of paranormal activity. He finds what he’s looking for, and so many more things he could never have expected.Warnings: Blood, death, injury, violence, ghosts, insects, nightmares, darkness, trauma.Please be aware, this story is meant to be creepy! There will be violence, gore, ghosts and traumatic issues. Younger readers and those more sensitive to the material, be kind to yourselves and choose what’s best for you.





	1. One

The bolt cutter popped and clunked a series of breaks in the chain link fence as Virgil looked rapidly between his task and the area around him. This chosen spanse of fence was obscured well by overgrown brush, but there was always a chance of being caught. 

It was always hard to tell how many guards were on duty, and how many were actually patrolling instead of playing on their phones in the security trailer on the other side of the park. Tonight, he was lucky, as none of the night shift workers seemed to be watching this area.

The fence rattled gently as he crawled through the opening he’d made and swam through the brush, towards the nearest building. What had once been an immaculately groomed patch of foliage had grown wildly, seemingly even rebelliously, from the outer frames of the designated theme park walkways and all over the area.

Statues of anthropomorphic animals stood silent throughout the place, smiling eternally as they were consumed by vines and grime, welcoming the intruder with vacant gazes. Virgil almost felt as if they were watching him, and shuddered.

He ducked into the cover of a severely neglected men’s room to review his “files”, or rather, notes on all of the info he had gathered from the internet thus far.

_“September 23rd, 1998_

_Orlando, FL_

_Starlight Kingdom Theme Park_

_Pyrotechnics stored improperly within the topmost levels of the Magic Castle facade were ignited by an unknown cause and created an instant, devastating explosion._

_As one half of the castle began to collapse, a fire spread rapidly, destroying much of the internal structures and adding to the growing panic throughout the park._

_Survivors who had been within the castle were paid to keep details of the incident to themselves. Casualities were never listed within the official reports._

_Some claimed to have been at the park that day, and insisted that Starlight Kingdom was covering up the truth of the extent of the damage._

_Starlight Kingdom has never followed up on these claims, and the park in question (one of several owned by the corporation) was shut down that week._

_To this day, the grounds remain abandoned. However, the company still employs a handful of security personnel to roam the area for intruders._

_Stories from former and current security guards present a pattern of possible spirit activities in and around the castle proper._

_Lights and shadowy figures have been seen roaming the walkways surrounding the castle. At times, voices can be heard, even singing._

_One guard claims to have been ordered to STAY AWAY from the ruined building by a voice which seemed to emanate from the nonfunctioning speakers underneath the bridge entrance._

_These claims have gone unproven and unexplained.”_

Virgil sighed quietly and steeled himself again. Real ghost hunters were unafraid to seek the truth.

He slipped out of the restroom and began to scurry towards the centermost area of the park, to the ruined castle of Starlight Kingdom. 

 

-

 

Ducking behind buildings and run-down kiosks, Virgil quietly made his way to the main walkway and poked his head out from behind an overturned pretzel stand to raise his camera for a good look out at the castle in front of him.

It was a beautiful and devastating sight.

To one side, enormous spires which had once gleamed pristine white were now yellowed and spotted with mildew from the merciless Florida humidity and sun.

Vines had latched onto the sides of the structure and now held the lower half of the castle in a leafy embrace, almost entirely obscuring the hundreds of yards of disintegrating police CAUTION tape attempting to block off the entances.

Then there was the collapsed side of the castle.

The ivory towers which had once mirrored the remaining white spires had been almost entirely destroyed on this side. Where they had once stood there was now a chasm, a gaping dark maw of aftermath, with half of one remaining spire lingering somewhat precariously over the palace’s open structural wound.

While the remaining exterior structure seemed to almost glow in moonlight, the vanta black darkness of the damaged side revealed absolutely nothing of the castle’s interior. It was almost as if the darkness swallowed up any scraps of light and Virgil wondered if this was due to soot and ash coating the inner walls.

It was a surreal sight to behold and he hoped his high-def camera would do it justice. 

After another check for guards, Virgil made a beeline for the walkway bridge leading into the castle and came to duck by a wall of cement at the very edge.

He paused there, listening carefully. This was perhaps close to the spot where one of the guards online claimed to have been commanded by a disembodied voice to STAY AWAY.

All he could hear now were crickets, and a chorus of amorous frogs living in the unkempt moat below the bridge. 

Nothing seemed to happen, so after a few minutes, he continued on towards the castle. He didn’t take the bridge, however. 

Virgil’s online reconnaissance had led him to a post made in 2004 about an employee entrance at the side of the castle, which many former cast members seemed to think had survived the catastrophe.

With their instructions in mind, he looped around the bridge and followed the outer edges of the moat and its surrounding walls to a small alcove created by a few connecting, now dilapidated panels. Moving closer, he spotted the subtle space between two of the panels and slipped through into the employee area of the park.

Aside from the side view of the ruined palace, the place was unremarkable. There were abandoned dumpsters, a few moldy golf carts, and dozens of plastic crates strewn over the walkways.

The backstage area didn’t interest Virgil. No accounts of ghostly activity had been reported from there, at least not to his knowledge and so his focus quickly returned to the castle.

There it was.

The employee entrance had been a glass door, similar to the type seen outside of convenience stores, only the glass was entirely smashed in, and once more he stared into unforgiving blackness inside of the castle.

He’d found the door. Now, to get in there and investigate. 

 

-

 

Virgil’s flashlight weighed somewhat heavily in one hand as he clicked the button and sent a beam of light into the shattered doorway.

It stretched off into the abyss like a tunnel of light cutting through the void, as the darkness nullified any stray photons almost impossibly. It appeared more like a laser than a flashlight in that space, and so little was able to be illuminated that Virgil nearly turned back.

But what paranormal investigator worth his mettle would abandon such an important and mysterious case?

Virgil moved carefully through the door, mindful not to catch his clothes or backpack on the shards of stray glass jutting out from the warped metal frame.

He pressed on, moving into the space and flicking the limited beam around the area. Insects scurried away from the light and Virgil grimaced, pulling his hood up over his head.

The last thing he needed was a spider in his hair.

After few careful moments of gazing around the images his flashlight revealed formed a sense of the surrounding area and he realized he was standing in a narrow hallway.

The doors closest to the entrance were locked, one unmarked, the other labelled CUSTODIAL CLOSET with a small plastic placard. There was an open entryway nearby, leading to a pair of restrooms and what looked what may have been a small break room.

A pair of sofas were flipped onto their fronts, with wilting gashes along the liners underneath. This looked suspiciously like a pair of condos for raccoons or any number of territorial, nesting, unpredictable creatures. He didn’t venture closer.

Instead, he continued down the hallway, sweeping his flashlight across a dusty tiled floor littered with rather random items. Long-expired make up, empty bags of all kinds, a few CDs, and several VHS tapes.

 _Right, this place is frozen in 1998_ , thought Virgil, smirking slightly in amusement as he stepped closer to examine one of the tapes. Good Burger.

“Excellent,” he murmured in approval before continuing.

He traveled further into the hallway and still didn’t see or hear anything of paranormal significance. So far, this was turning out to be an interesting bout of urban exploration and little else.

Virgil’s boots shuffled him carefully through the dusty and otherwise silent atmosphere until he came to a pair of doors: MEN’S DRESSING ROOM and WOMEN’S DRESSING ROOM.

Although he thought himself alone there, it still felt wrong to enter the latter door.

With gloved hands, he reached for the men’s dressing room door handle and tried it–unlocked! Brows raised in pleasant surprise, he pushed the door open and slipped inside.

The first thing he noticed was the temperature as a wave of cold swept into him. No where else in the building, likely nowhere else in the state of Florida, was as frigid as this dressing room.

The implications of these freezing temperatures within a supposedly haunted building were processing for Virgil when the crackling of static bursting to life caused him to drop the flashlight as he leapt a foot in the air and bristled much like a Halloween cat.

The static increased in volume as he crouched and scrambled to pull his flashlight back into his grasp. His heart was racing, where was that sound coming from?!

Still crouched low to the floor, Virgil finally snatched up his flashlight and aimed it at the source of the static.

The beam swerved and trembled over the floor until it reached a dusty, mold-speckled walkie-talkie beside an overturned chair. There was a small screen and indicator light on the front, both lifeless and blank, but the static continued its sharp hissing.

It was freezing. This dead walkie-talkie was shrieking static.  **Something**  was  _happening_.

His cognizance clicked back into place finally and his hands clamored over his hoodie pocket for his camera.

Suddenly, the static went absolutely silent.

For one suspended, surreal moment, Virgil heard only his excited breathing and the pounding of his heart in his ears.

It stopped already–?

**“LEAVE!”**

The voice erupted from the speaker with an impossible volume, and a thunderous, terrifying ferocity.

Virgil gasped and fell back on the floor, creating a mushroom cloud of dust only faintly visible in the flashlight beam.

**“RIGHT _NOW_!!”**

It had intensified, become almost desperately insistent.

He screamed and slammed his hand onto the flashlight, yanking it to himself. His body moved almost on its own as he crawl-ran to his feet, stumbling on all fours for a moment before catching his stride and sprinting madly back down the hallway.

Virgil reached the broken door in seconds and jumped through the frame with abandon. One of the glass shards caught against his left sleeve and instantly carved a gash from his outer wrist to his elbow.

He stumbled, dropping the flashlight again, and opted to leave it when he heard the voice bellowing from the hallway behind him.

**“STAY AWAY FROM HERE!!”**

The flashlight was left behind, along with a thin trail of blood which would go unnoticed by the security guard passing through that night, as the flashlight’s batteries died only seconds after Virgil fled the scene.


	2. Two

The nurses at the emergency room weren’t pleased that Virgil wouldn’t tell them how he managed to get such a lengthy cut down the back of his arm. 

He didn’t see it as any of their business, and they would have to patch him up regardless, while he trembled in the triage chair and struggled to keep still enough for the stitches to be threaded into him.

His body only recently had begun to allow him to register the pain of his wound as his heart rate gradually slowed. Thankfully, local anesthetic made the suturing process tolerable enough, if he didn’t watch.

The voice was back in the castle. He’d gotten away in, more or less, one piece. The threat had passed, but his adrenaline lingered, along with a deep regret.

As terrifying as the experience had been, Virgil had found exactly what he was seeking and if he’d kept his camera rolling he would have the moment saved in a beautiful digital file. 

Instead, he was getting over a dozen stitches, and he’d lost his favorite flashlight.

An overworked nurse handed him his discharge papers and a prescription for pain medicine, neither of which he cared about or kept track of after that moment. 

Sore and still shell shocked, Virgil drove to his apartment and sat in his car for nearly an hour to stare blankly out at the street in front of him. The sun was rising. 

Time for bed then.

He slunk into the room and curled up on his floorbound mattress, hugging stray pillows to himself. Adrenaline waning, he was soon overtaken by exhaustion.

–

It was daylight.

Hundreds of people were moving around him, past him, through him. He floated, disembodied, through the main walkway from the entrance of Starlight Kingdom. 

In front of him was the courtyard, and beyond that, the bridge leading to the Magic Castle in its original, whole and flawless condition.

The park operated around him in full swing. The scent of popcorn and roasted almonds washed over Virgil as he formlessly moved through the courtyard and towards the bridge. Voices, giddy and exhausted, filled his ears until they were suddenly silenced by shock.

The explosion sent a deafening blast of sound and heat through the courtyard and Virgil, who had no ears to cover or hands with which to cover them. 

Still, he continued to hover towards the castle at a slow and steady drift. He’d reached the bridge when two painfully loud cracks signaled the destruction of a pair of towers, which fell down onto the palace interior, one after the other.

The voices around him were active again, screaming now in horror and panic. He couldn’t blame them.

Soon he was across the bridge and being drawn towards the floor level of the castle, beneath the spreading fire and toppling debris.

He reached the exterior wall and slid through it, the sounds from outside becoming muted as he entered the wall. 

The fire and destruction vibrated through the walls and through him as a new set of screaming voices became slowly more audible.

Then, another massive cracking sound, followed by an earth-shattering boom which seemed to quake the entirety of his being, somehow intensifying and lingering far longer than it should have.

 _It’s too much!_  he heard himself thinking.  _Too–TOO MUCH, I **CAN’T** –!!_

Virgil jerked awake in bed, already yelping, then crying out again in pain when the movement agitated the wound in his arm.

He hugged his arm and curled over himself, shocks of purple hair falling over his tearing eyes. His breath came quickly, inhaled in quick gasps and exhaled with soft vocalizations. He struggled to slow it and sank over himself further as he did so.

It was a dream. Virgil was exhausted, his arm looked like something from The Nightmare Before Christmas, but that was the worst of it.

“I’m okay,” he told himself tiredly. “I’m okay..”

But was he?

As the shock of the nightmare ebbed, Virgil detected other intense emotions: shame, and deep sadness. A wetness on his cheeks alerted him he was crying.

“Ugh, why?” he now asked himself and rubbed his sleeve across his eyes.

Sure, he was upset by the dream, and pretty bothered that he hadn’t gotten the earlier incident on camera, but this level of shame and depression felt entirely overblown to the point of seeming foreign.

He heard the voice in his head at that moment.

 **“LEAVE! RIGHT**   _ **NOW!!”**_

It had sounded so angry and threatening to him at the time.

**“STAY AWAY FROM HERE!!”**

Replaying the sound in his head he realized what he had been hearing could also, and very easily, have been pure desperation.

A heightened desperation which might match up with the intense, painful feelings he was now feeling slowly fade from him along with the terror the dream had brought him.

The realization hit him and he sank to lie on his side with a long moan.

He was going back to the Magic Castle.

 

-

 

It didn’t seem as if the entrance Virgil had created had been discovered, but crawling under the fence was now much more uncomfortable with his arm in such a state.

He lifted himself into a crouch and scurried in the direction of the castle. His heart was pounding in his chest already in anticipation of what might be waiting for him in the castle tonight.

Whatever it was, he was going to get proof of it on video.

If he didn’t get chased by security…

Virgil was moving past the entrance to a kiddie ride when the near-silence around him was broken by a soft fluttering of sound from within the ride’s queue.

He froze near the fallen height check and listened carefully. The sound came again, more faintly, as if the source were moving away from him.

It was laughter.

Gentle, joyous snickering as if someone was headed to and anticipating experiencing the ride.

Before he could get his camera turned on, the giggling had either stopped or moved to far away from him to be detected.

Virgil sighed at another failure to record, and continued on his way towards the castle.

He paused again at the same spot by the wall framing the moat and castle bridge entrance. If he tried to enter through the front, would this just anger the voice further?

Would that guarantee a video?

Virgil mulled over his options, and the likelihood of the spiritual forces being able to actually hurt him, but was suddenly interrupted by a new, very quiet sound.

He lifted his head somewhat to see over the wall to the castle ruins, where there was no one in sight.

But the sound continued, soft and obscured, eventually sorting itself out in his perception as a voice slowly singing from within the palace.

_“At times, voices can be heard, even singing.”_

Hands shaking, Virgil lifted his camera and then paused. The mic wasn’t sensitive enough, there was no way he’d be able to get a clear audio from here.

He looked across the bridge, then turned away from it and scuttled back towards the subtle backstage entrance.

The scene behind the park was just as it had been the night before, but back here, the voice was less audible.

Virgil frowned as he approached the employee castle entrance and spotted his flashlight on the ground. He picked it up gingerly and tried it, unsurprised to find its batteries dead. He then slipped off his backpack, replaced the batteries, and looked hard at the broken door before him.

Nothing could be heard out here. But there had definitely been a sound coming from inside the castle.

Screaming walkie-talkies or no, he was getting his ghost on video.

After a few deep breaths, Virgil re-entered the cast member entrance door, with a touch more care to avoid the glass in the frame.

The hallway was silent again, and he tread as lightly as he could to keep his steps quiet and undetectable.

His every nerve was on edge and he anticipated a burst of noise or bout of disembodied screaming at any moment, but it never came.

He reached the door to the men’s dressing room again to find it still open, only now the temperature from the doorway seemed to match that of the weather outside.

Whatever had been in this room had moved.

He withdrew and activated his camera.

Virgil shuddered and darted his eyes around the room. The walkie-talkie was still there, silent now, but he only kept his light on it for a brief moment before examining the rest of the place slightly.

It was a little easier to make out details when looking at the camera’s night vision display, and watching the screen was fractionally less unnerving than peering around the darkened room with his naked eyes.

The dressing room was small, with a few wooden chairs (all but one in a broken state) and one rotten couch. Along the opposite wall from the doorway was a long, tall, and very broken mirror perched above a long countertop which seemed to have served as a multi-person vanity mirror.

Above the mirror was a long shelf stretching along the wall, broken up by vertical separators sporting peeling adhesive labels.

Virgil moved in closer and tried to read the names on the labels but they had been ripped apart by animals and warped by the humidity, and only a few of the letters were legible.

“ICHA”

“ANE”

“OM”

Frowning some in thought, Virgil zoomed in on the labels one by one, recording the letters so that he might try to figure out their full meanings when he was safely back in his apartment.

Other than a drawer full of moldy q-tips in the counter beneath the mirror, there wasn’t much to be seen here, and Virgil moved back into the hallway.

At the far end of the hall, perhaps twenty feet from him, was another sofa. This one stood out from the others in its strange positioning.

Instead of being flopped onto its front or back, it looked as if someone had taken the time to pull the couch up on one of its sides so that the arms of it leaned against the floor and wall with the seats up vertically.

He moved closer to this oddity and realized with a soft gasp that the outline of another doorway could be seen behind it.

Had someone done this on purpose? Why?

These questions were noted but not of terrible concern for him because when he got close enough to see behind the moldy sofa, he noticed the door. The handle was broken and barely hanging on, but this didn’t keep his attention for long.

He could hear the voice again.

It was just as far-off and unclear as it had been from beside the bridge, but the sound seemed ongoing, and he wasn’t about to lose another chance to capture his precious proof of spiritual activity.

Despite his endocrine systems’ chemical protests, Virgil ducked under the small space beneath the couch, and slowly pushed open the door.

 

-

[(Click here for the version of the song closest to the style of that used in the upcoming scene.)](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FtaCwv2VMH_w&t=NjA5NTNiMTJlYzE5ZmM0OGFjMGUyYzJiMzI4ODQ1NWJlOGM4M2RhOCw4ZmM2MGY2ODMxOThjZGMxMmQ1ZmJmYzliNTdlZmE5MWFjZTllYzBj)

-

Inside the mostly-blocked door was another hallway, this one much shorter in length than the previous. There were only three doors: one on either side, with placards reading ENTERTAINMENT WARDROBE and the other reading ADMIN. There were four blank slots below the latter, likely where the administration members’ names had formerly been listed.

The wardrobe room contained several rows of empty clothing racks, populated only by dozens of hangers and now a rather dazzling array of spider webs. Virgil didn’t enter, although the aesthetic was quite appealing to him.

He didn’t enter the admin room either, which only contained more broken furniture, but continued on towards the third door, the one at the very end of the hallway.

It was a single door that looked only half-closed, but seeing beyond it from the hallway was nearly impossible due to some large, dark piece of debris covering most of the frame.

The voice could be heard coming from this door, and as he neared it, the voice became gradually more clear until he could begin to make out words here and there.

“ _..walking my mind, my… the sun…”_

The tune was clear enough now that it was starting to sound somewhat familiar, like something he’d heard on the radio or in a movie or show.

_“Lord knows… cold wind blows, it’ll… around…”_

Virgil didn’t feel the way he expected to feel as he made his way slowly, as silently as he possibly could, towards the doorway. He thought he would be elated, excited along with terrified. 

Instead, along with a rise of terror in his mental backseat, he felt deeply upset. This singing was so slow and mournful, and the feelings of disgrace and depression he’d experienced after waking earlier were slowly returning and escalating as he neared the door. 

_“..hours of time.. phone line.. talk of things to come..”_

His heart was hammering in his chest as he took the last several steps towards the doorframe and the voice became almost completely clear to him.

_“I’ve seen fire.. and I’ve seen rain.. I’ve seen sunny days, that I thought would never end..”_

Tears welled in Virgil’s eyes as he listened, trembling, and tried to clearly examine the door and debris before him. It looked as if there was room towards the very bottom of the door, not quite three feet of space, small enough for a young child or very petite adult. 

He was neither of those things, but that wouldn’t stop him from peering underneath and getting as much as he could in view.

Virgil knelt carefully by the door frame and ever-so slowly slid his head and camera forward to see into the room beyond.

_“I’ve seen lonely times, when I could not find a friend..”_

The place was enormous, likely the largest room the castle could have housed, in the shape of rectangle. This door was placed on the longer side towards one end of the room, perhaps thirty feet from the nearest corner and a couple hundred feet from a door on the opposite wall. 

The floor was indistinguishable, absolutely carpeted with debris, ash, ruined furniture and fragments of it. 

None of these things held his focus for even a fraction of a second.

_“But I always thought I’d see.. you again…”_

There, standing not even twenty feet from him, stood the shadowed figure of a person. 

 

-

 

The figure was facing away from him, or at least they seemed to be, as far as Virgil could tell by the placement of their feet and the silhouetted outline of their hands and arms. 

From their place in the room and the position of their head, they seemed to be singing to a particular cluster of debris and an overturned rectangular table.

Their song came to a melancholy end and he heard a soft sigh escape them as the last notes of their low, resonating voice echoed out in the open space. He watched as the figure sank to the ground and curled over themself, holding their head in blatant misery.

The ceiling above was completely removed, the night sky and half moon displayed clearly through the broken open structure. Throughout the room Virgil spotted many more piles and strewn bits of rubble, including large chunks and swaths of off-white.

This was where the spires had fallen in.

Two things dawned on Virgil at this moment. The first was that that this spirit seemed much more depressed than angry.

The second thing he realized was that, now that their song had ended, the place was entirely silent.

And he was still on the floor.

And  _any_  movement he made from this point forward would be at least slightly audible and the figure would most likely hear him.

Would they sing again, if he waited long enough? Or disappear, maybe?

As he struggled to figure out how to deal with the situation, Virgil began to notice something more.

Within the spaces between the debris where the figure was kneeling, shadows began to slither and undulate. His eyes widened as the shadows coalesced and moved across the floor towards the figure, who began to tense and tremble.

The darkness pooled underneath the figure and the sound of harsh, indiscernible whispering began to emanate from the shadows. Virgil saw the figure’s elbows raise slightly as they went from holding their head to rigidly clutching it as if enduring something awful.

He tensed. This was the chance he needed. The figure was obviously pretty distracted, maybe he could just get out of here?

But he couldn’t.

Whatever was happening here had probably never been captured on video, possibly never even witnessed by another living person.

Virgil looked down and slowly lowered his camera to rest on the floor. It’d be safer to leave it here for now and turn the display so that he could see it from out of the figure’s line of view.

He adjusted the camera carefully and looked up to check the position of the figure and the shadows beneath them.

He gasped.

The figure had moved.

They appeared now before him, less than five feet away, standing and staring down at him with what he could now see were dimly glowing, ruby red eyes.

 **“ _You…”_**  Their voice was no longer lilting and sad. Again, it held an almost furious, terrifying intensity.

Virgil cried out in alarm and reflexively tried to stand and scramble away from the figure. His shoulders and back hit the debris above him with urgent force, and instantly a grinding, crunching sound could be heard from it, building in volume.

He collapsed to the floor on his face, hands scrambling to find purchase in the dust and ash.

In a startling instant, the figure dissolved into a puddle of shadows on the floor which rushed towards and over Virgil, engulfing him.

The sensation of being within the shadowed mass was like free-falling through an arctic sky. His entire world was a dark vortex of freezing cold air, humming with vibrating energy.

Then, he was thrown to the floor, sliding a couple of feet across the filth before coming to a stop. A thunderous crash erupted from behind him and Virgil contracted into a tight, protective ball, hugging his head.

A rush of dust-filled air blew over him as falling debris slammed into the floor and toppled into itself, settling gradually after several moments and leaving the room clouded with particles.

Virgil pulled the top of his undershirt up over his mouth and nose as he moved upright to look behind him at the hundreds of pounds of fallen structure that would have crushed his upper body like a pancake.

He shuddered upon realizing this.

A low huff caught his attention and he turned back to find himself sitting at the feet of the figure, which now stood over him with their hands on their hips while their eyes, their only distinguishable facial feature, narrowed at him.

 ** _“Now you can’t leave.”_**  Their voice was low, monotone.

His eyes widened and Virgil tried to crabwalk backwards away from them. The stitches in his arms pulled agonizingly at his skin and he fell onto his back with a wince.

“I’m so–SO sorry for disturbing you–I’ll go!” he heard himself sputtering.

The figure glided forward after him with ease.

**_“Didn’t you hear me? I said you can’t leave.”_ **

Virgil’s chest ached with how hard his heart was pounding now.

Was he being taken prisoner by this figure?

They raised an arm to gesture with an open hand towards the most recently fallen debris.

**_“You’ve destroyed the only exit, you reckless heathen!”_ **

A blankness overcame Virgil and he turned his head to stare numbly at the indicated area, then back to the figure before him.

They continued, sounding less monotone and more irritated by the second,  ** _“You just HAD to come back here, huh? Why didn’t you LISTEN to me?”_**

His mouth hung open now in a total loss for words or coherent thought. The first fully formed idea which came to his head fell rapidly, clumsily out of his mouth.

“Areyouaghost?”

The figure’s head lolled backwards and he could almost see their ruby eyes rolling at him. They floated up from the floor and tilted forward to hover over him horizontally, bringing their face to within a few inches of his.

_**“What do you think?”** _


	3. Three

Virgil stared tensely into the figure’s eyes as he was observed expectantly by the being hovering with their face mere inches from his own.

The entirety of their form, except for the eyes, seemed to be comprised of concentrated shadow.

“Y-youare,” he stammered and closed his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest to hold his shoulders with their opposite hands. He squeezed and tapped gently at his upper arms as he timed and continued to slow his breathing.

When his heartbeat had slowed and his fear had subsided enough for coherent thought to begin returning, he slowly opened his eyes, to see the ruby pair before him now squinting some in confusion.

The figure asked,  _ **“What on Earth were you doing?”**_  with a slight air of incredulity.

The edge of intensity in their tone was consistent, lending an extra, deeper layer of resonance to their voice than the acoustics of the room would naturally offer.

“EMDR, and breathing exercises,” murmured Virgil. “EMDR means ‘eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.’ It can help with anxiety and trauma.”

They watched him with increasing confusion before asking,  _“Why did you do that instead of trying to run from me again?”_

Their voice had quieted to the dulcet softness with which they had been singing before, the additional layer of resonance now gone.

“Because you’re not going to hurt me.”

_“You don’t know that.”_

“I do. Didn’t you just save me?”

The figure paused and seemed to glance away. They said,  _“Who’d want to deal with the mess you would have made?”_

Virgil almost smiled and said, “You already tried to keep me away for my own safety–”

_“So you wouldn’t create issues for me, Grapehead. Look around us! You’ve barged in here and ruined the place–f-further!”_

He did look around, and when he saw the mass of rubble where the figure had been singing before, he remembered the writhing, seemingly tormenting shadows.

When he looked back to the figure, it was staring at him with a wide, intense gaze and rigid posture.

Virgil wanted badly to ask them what happened in that spot but suspected he already knew, and perhaps the figure knew he knew, and it definitely didn’t sound like a conversation either of them were prepared to have.

“Wwhat’s your name?” he asked instead, his delivery a bit awkward as the question flopped out of him.

The figure didn’t respond but seemed to relax slightly at being asked this question.

After an awkward silence, Virgil offered, “I’m Virgil…”

They relaxed a little further, then responded,  _“Roman.”_

“You’re.. male?”

The shape of their eyes suggested a quirking of one brow.  _“Yes.”_

“Nice to meet you, dude.”

“ _…And you as well.. also 'dude?’”_

“That’s accurate, yeah. Thanks.”

A new awkward silence presented itself as Virgil struggled to figure out how to deal with the situation and Roman didn’t seem to actually know what to do with himself at all with his scary ghost persona put away.

Finally, Virgil asked, “Do you want to continue this conversation in an upright position?”

Roman’s attention fell to their current positions, with Virgil lying on the floor and him hovering above him.

 _“Ah, right,”_  he said and brought his feet to the floor by Virgil, standing.

He watched as Virgil began moving gingerly to his feet, wincing and grimacing and trying his damnedest not to.

Roman asked,  _“Are you injured?”_

Virgil carefully removed his backpack and began peeling off his hoodie to look at his stitches. The skin around them was bleeding, but not badly. He hoped they were only agitated, as they didn’t seem to be torn.

A deep soreness pulsed in his upper back, shoulders and sides, and he recalled hitting the underside of the debris in his panic, then being thrown across the floor by Roman.

“I should be fine, just–”

 _“We’ve got to find you a way out of here,”_  Roman stated, cutting him off, before zooming away from Virgil and towards the nearest wall, still hovering.

Virgil watched him flit around by the walls as the situation processed itself in his mind.

He’d found an actual ghost. He almost died. The ghost saved his life. The ghost was socially awkward. That seemed reasonable, considering twenty years of isolation. He now had proof of–

His heart sank.

He shuffled over to the debris where he had once captured Roman’s seemingly unpleasant experience on digital film, but he knew, looking over the ruined scene, that it was unlikely his camera had made it.

 _Goodnight, sweet Panasonic HD Handheld,_  he thought solemnly.

An idea came to mind and Virgil reached into his pocket and was relieved to see that his phone had survived the incident without a scratch. Maybe the phone camera would suffice for video proof? Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

He frowned. The battery was at seventeen percent.

How could that have been? He charged it in the car, it had been at one-hundred percent less than an hour ago. It never drained this quickly, even when running demanding apps.

Roman’s voice caught his attention once more.

_“What are you doing now?”_

Virgil moved towards him, explaining, “I read online that this place is haunted, so I guess that’s confirmed. I came to get video proof, though.”

He lifted his phone, but paused when Roman’s ruby eyes narrowed at him in what he imagined was a scowl of sorts.

 _“You put yourself in mortal danger just so you could come and pry into other people’s afterlives?”_  he asked, clearly angry at this point.

Virgil pocketed his phone.

“I.. guess I did do that, yeah,” he said. “That wasn’t cool of me. And I’m sorry.”

Roman paused for a beat before he sighed and waved a hand dismissively, returning his attention to the walls around them.

_“I can’t seem to find an exit for you, Virgil, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to create one. Stand back as far as you can. If those useless security guards heard the racket you caused earlier, and are actually going to do anything about it, then they could be here at any moment. They’ll definitely notice what I’m about to do.”_

Virgil did as he was told and slowly backed away, asking with some uncertainty in his voice, “What are you going to do?”

Roman paused for a beat before saying in a tone that sounded as if it came from a helpless smile,  _“I’m gonna do the best I can.”_

With that, he dissolved again into the floor as a shallow mass of shadows, then launched himself in a tapered shape towards the wall nearest him. It burst apart into a crumbling hole a bit larger than the average single-door entrance.

The reference to The Nightmare Before Christmas registered with Virgil as the wall was blasted apart and he fell in love in an instant as pieces of dry wall and rubble rained to the floor.

Roman reformed facing Virgil.  _“Go now! Run!”_

Virgil twitched into action and took off for the exit Roman had made. Reluctance pulled at his muscles, tore at his will, but he knew he couldn’t stay. Not right now.

_“Use the opening to the right, the brush isn’t as thick! I’ll distract anyone who gives chase. And **DON’T COME BACK.”**_

With a final, reverberating message, Roman melted to the floor once more and vanished from view.

Virgil didn’t stop running until he reached his car.

After dealing with more perturbed nurses at the emergency room, Virgil found himself sitting at home.

He perched on the edge of his bed in the dark and stared at the floor.

Roman was going to be really annoyed to see him again.

 

-

 

At first, he feels nothing.

The air smells like smoke. Ash still falls from what’s left of the structure above him, dancing and swirling through the air in front of him like snowflakes as he settles into awareness.

The floor beneath him glistens with moisture, moonlight streaking the wet accumulation of charred materials with stripes of white and silver.

His perspective turns. Nearly everything around him has been painted black by fire.

To his side is the wall, behind him the door.

 _That_  door.

Ahead, one of the tallest piles of fallen debris has been pulled apart.

 _That_ table is there.

He’s drawn closer to it.

His vision settles on the floor beneath that table. The color of the floor is lighter there, making the two dried pools of blood somewhat visible there in the dark.

The smaller pool extends out into a long, thinning tail leading towards the door.

The other is several times larger, blossoming out into a broad, uneven shape across the floor nearest to what remains of the debris around the far end of the table.

His emotional numbness is suddenly snatched away, allowing a wave of overwhelming grief to wash heavily over him.

An anguished scream rises in his chest and erupts out of his form.

Wracked with devastation, he lifts his hands towards his head, the cacophony within threatening to shred him apart.

His hands.

Another cry escapes him as he stares down at them, this one of intense alarm rapidly spreading through him, escalating into absolute existential horror.

Darkness has become him. His limbs and hands seem to consume any light around them, soot-black and, he’s now realizing, freezing cold. 

Every part of him is so, so cold.

He gazes down in terrified disbelief.

A pool of shadows has appeared below him, detectable only in its inability to reflect the moonlight. His feet blend into it.

He tries to step away and falls into it, onto his hands and knees as his feet refuse to move.

The shadows grasp him where he lands, sliding up his wrists and legs, gluing him in place. He screams again and tries to wrench himself away. They hold him tight.

Voices begin to whisper to him from the shadows.

_“you failed… you failed… you FAILED… YOU **FAILED** …”_

He had. He’d failed.

And this was his punishment.

–

Virgil twitched awake to find himself covered in sweat and tears. He shakily lifted a hand, rubbed his head, and moved to sit upright and grab his laptop.

If these nightmares had anything to do with Roman, then there was no doubt in his mind now that the ruby-eyed figure needed some form of help. It didn’t look like anyone else was going to be offering it.

He must have died there. But where was he from? Had he been a tourist or an employee, maybe a local? There had to be thousands of deceased Romans out there.

Opening his laptop and squinting at its light, Virgil ran a search for obituaries for people named Roman during September of nineteen ninety-eight.

There was nothing to be found involving Starlight Kingdom, and he didn’t actually know what Roman looked like so the pictures and descriptions available were useless.

He spent hours scouring the internet, once again, for information about the Starlight Kingdom catastrophe, but came up with nothing more than that which he already knew.

When his phone alarm went off, Virgil flinched, deactivated it, and stared hard at his laptop for a few moments. Then, he typed a post.

_“I’m looking for information on the Starlight Kingdom explosion on the 23rd of September, 1998 in Orlando, Florida. I know the company paid a lot of hush money to make it pretty much impossible to find out what really happened to the people inside the castle during the explosion, but someone out there has to know something. I’ll take and appreciate whatever info you have. Thanks.”_

He spent a few minutes copying and pasting the post to various Starlight Kingdom, paranormal, and conspiracy sites.

It was time for manual labor, to appease the capitalist machine.

After a mind-numbing shift of organizing and re-organizing at a local warehouse, Virgil drove directly from work to the cluster of shopping plazas closest to the park’s borders.

Then, a twenty minute walk through the dense woods, which were meant to isolate the park from the rest of the world, and he could see from the treeline that the entrance he’d created for himself was now blocked off with plywood, cinder blocks, and caution tape.

Virgil set his jaw and moved further into the trees to remain out of sight as he began circling the park, seeking a new entrance.

 

-

 

It took traveling almost to the other side of the park from his original spot for Virgil to find a new stretch of fence suitable for breaking and entering.

Another series of severing clamps from the bolt cutters and he was inside, crawling through more overgrown foliage until he reached the darkened walkways between the cluster of indoor rides and restaurants making up the fantasy-themed area of the park.

Virgil moved with a wince up onto his feet and began slipping between the buildings as he made his way towards the back entrance of the castle.

He was scurrying past what had once been some kind of slow-moving boat ride full of animatronics, the scent of mildew and stagnant water wafting out into the walkways, when he heard the crying.

It was so faint and subdued, he might not have heard it, were it not somewhat amplified by the large, open space within the queue area from which it emanated. Soft sobs, hiccoughs, and weary little moans of sorrow echoed quietly off of the walls.

Virgil stopped immediately and listened. The voice in the cries sounded close enough to Roman’s that it could very well be him. Had he moved over here? Why?

With as much stealth as he could muster, Virgil moved slowly into the queue and began descending towards the level at which the ride would have been boarded, two decades before. The cries became somewhat clearer as he neared the bottom of the zig-zagging ramp of a walkway.

He was just about to step onto the floor level when his boot met an empty plastic bottle he hadn’t seen in the darkness. It skittered across the floor, breaking the quietude of the area and causing the source of the crying to suddenly silence with a sharp gasp.

Virgil went still, grimacing, and waited for the bottle to come to a halt before softly calling into the darkness, “Roman?”

There came no response.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you didn’t want me to come back.”

Again, silence.

“…I was hoping I could find out more about you, if you’re okay with that–”

A tired voice interrupted him.

 _“I’m not Roman.”_  

Virgil’s blood turned to ice as he processed what he’d just heard. The source of the voice was nowhere to be seen, but their words had been as clear as day.

“Are.. you a spirit?” he asked.

This got no response.

He tried, “What’s your name?”

This was met only with the whisper of a drained sigh.

After a moment, Virgil offered his own name, but the silence continued.

“Alright,” he said then, backing up towards the top of the queue. “I’ll come back another time, if I can. If you want to talk then, just let me know.”

The voice said nothing until he reached the very top of the queue several seconds later.

_“Thanks, kiddo…”_

–

Virgil was frowning as he continued through the park towards the castle’s rear bridge entrance.

Another mysterious spirit had presented itself, but if whomever was there didn’t feel up to communicating with him yet then there was little he could do for them.

They had sounded as woeful as Roman had when he was singing, and Virgil wondered just how many unhappy spirits inhabited the place.

When he reached the closest outer wall outlining the bridge towards the castle, he was displeased to see a layered slew of construction barricades blocking the way.

 _Great_ , he thought, ducking to crouch in the shadows by the wall.

From the looks of things, it could take him a few minutes to weave through the entire little maze that park security had constructed, or he could clamor up onto the seven inch-wide cement wall and use that to bypass the barricades entirely.

For the sake of spending the least amount of time out in the open for risk of being caught, he opted for the latter route.

As quietly as he could, Virgil took a last look around for patrolling guards before hefting himself up onto the wall and moving carefully to his feet to stand.

Steadying his breathing, he walked along the wall, the walkway and barricades to his left. To his right was, at first, more overgrown foliage.

This gave way to a sudden drop off and he realized with a sick lurch in his gut that the moat had been almost entirely drained, leaving perhaps half a foot of water standing nearly twenty feet below him.

Still, Virgil continued, ignoring the frightful drop to his right and hoping Roman wouldn’t be as quick to throw him out if he distracted him with the subject of the other spirit, or perhaps showed him the wonders of modern cell phone technology.

Nearing the halfway point, he was focused primarily on his footing as he moved.

Virgil would later think in mild reverence about how quietly the guard must have been moving to go unnoticed until they were standing about four feet behind him on the bridge at the edge of the barricade maze.

“HEY! Buddy!”

Their sudden volume and proximity caused his entire body to jerk in surprise.

The guard shouted a curse as Virgil staggered and lost his footing on the slim and mildewed top of the wall.

Just his luck, he fell to the right, plummeting straight down towards the shallow moat, and the unforgiving pavement less than a foot below it.

He shut his eyes tightly as the water rushed up to meet him… but he just kept on falling.


	4. Four

Virgil screamed in alarm, flailing his arms, as the intense cold enveloped him, snatching him out of mid-air and thrusting him into a dark realm of freezing, howling winds.

The familiarity of the sensation struck him after a moment and he stopped screaming when he realized what was going on.

Suddenly the winds ceased and he was dropped flat onto his back, seemingly only from a few inches, into the filthy, tepid water of the moat.

He jerked upright, soaked and gasping in surprise, to see the figure of Roman drifting down towards him. The rapidly escaping footsteps of the terrified security guard could be heard fading into the distance.

_“Really?”_ Roman asked, irritated, one hand on his hip as he observed Virgil with disapproval. _“Do I even need to say anything?”_

“I know, you didn’t want me to come back–”

_“And yet here you are! Nearly getting yourself killed, again!”_

Virgil sighed and gathered himself up out of the water, soaked and dripping, to stand.

He decided to be forthright, and said, “I’m sorry. But I can’t just leave you here like this.”

Roman seemed to tense slightly but said nothing in response yet.

“You seem pretty miserable, and so does the other spirit over in the boat ride,” Virgil continued, veering towards the subject of the crying spirit to try and distract Roman.

Narrowing his eyes again, Roman asked, successfully distracted, _“Which ‘other’ spirit, praytell?”_

Virgil gestured with one arm back towards the outer edge of the fantasy-themed area before attempting to wring out his hoodie sleeve. His clothes were heavy with stagnant water, hair glued to his face.

“Someone over there was crying, and they wouldn’t give me a name or anything, but I know they need help,” Virgil continued. He then added, under his breath, “And so do you.”

Roman didn’t respond to him at first, instead floating up further into the air to look towards the indicated area.

After a few moments of pensive staring for Roman, and more attempts at drying himself from Virgil, the former descended back towards his eye level.

_“I’ll take care of it. You need to go,”_ Roman said flatly, arms crossed, or at least seemingly so, since all Virgil could ever make out was his silhouette and eyes.

Virgil’s lip curled a bit in annoyance.

“What about you?” he demanded, pulling his very-damp hoodie back on after having been attempting to wring it out further.

Roman scoffed, lifting a wrist and flourishing his fingertips out in a gesture of indignation.

_“Despite what you **think** you may know about me from our **extremely limited** interactions, Virgil, I’m doing just fine on my own.”_

Virgil glowered at him, despising how Roman was lying to himself but trying to understand that it may be what’s held him together all this time. Still, it couldn’t continue.

“That isn’t what it looked like when we met,” he stated lowly.

_“You mean when I saved your life, oh, the first time? This is wish number two, street rat, and I am **not** your genie. If you keep coming back here, you’re going to regret it.”_

“Why?” Virgil asked, defiant. “What are you going to do to me if I don’t?”

Roman stiffened.

Virgil’s eyes narrowed at him now.

“You wouldn’t just let me die. You’ve had multiple chances now. What, do you think someone else is going to do something to me?” he inquired, speaking more slowly as the idea dawned on him.

There came a rattling hiss of incoherent whispers from Roman’s upper body and Virgil stared, frozen, while the shadows of his form seemed to ripple and writhe as if trying to escape him.

Before he could say anything, Roman dissolved and launched at him, plunging him back into the frigid darkness briefly before Virgil found himself landing painfully on his backside on the bridge.

Roman reformed in front of him, clearly displeased, arms crossed tightly over his chest and ruby eyes narrowed.

Virgil glared and got to his feet, demanding, “Why won’t you jus–?!”

Freezing cold hands grabbed his shoulders suddenly and Roman was turning him to face the walkway at the end of the bridge.

“Stop, Roman! Just talk to me!” Virgil protested, but Roman easily began to push and guide him over to the walkway.

With a light shove, he sent Virgil staggering off of the bridge walkway and onto the level ground of the fantasy-area of the park.

Virgil whirled, readying a remark, in time to see Roman vanish from sight once more. For a second, he snarled to himself, thinking Roman had just hurried away to avoid him again.

He was half-right.

A stark black web of shadows appeared on the ground a few feet in front of him and spread rapidly across the bridge towards the castle. In all of a few seconds, the shadowed net had engulfed the bridge, and Virgil scuttled back when he heard the cement of its structure pop and crunch.

Suddenly, it shattered.

Virgil watched in disbelief as the bridge collapsed in front of him, then he jerked and clenched his fists when he heard the one on the opposite side of the castle being demolished as well.

Eyes burning, he turned and ran back through the fantasy area towards his new exit.

He wasn’t going to let Roman win like this.

-

After a soggy drive home and a long, somewhat brooding shower, Virgil sat in his robe on his bed and checked his laptop.

He made the rounds through the message boards and forums to which he’d posted his request for information, seeking responses.

There was only one.

_“Hello! I was in the castle the day of the explosion. What do you need to know and why?”_

Virgil stared in exhilaration and shock at the message for a moment before trying to remember how to structure a sentence for a response.

He wrote: _“This is for personal research. I’ve been obsessed with the history of the company for years but this event is such a blind spot. I want to know if you remember what was going on inside at the time of the explosion, or if you remember anyone in particular being there. Really, anything you can remember would be great. Thank you for getting back to me.”_

It didn’t feel right to lie about his motives, but he didn’t know how admitting “I’ve got a crush on a ghost in the castle and I want to help him be less miserable” would work out.

Response posted, he refreshed the page every five seconds for about ten minutes before realizing how ridiculous he was being.

It was time to research the underground utility tunnels.

–

Virgil barely slept before his next work shift, and could only remember hazy dream-memories about waiting endlessly in line at one of the park rides, stuck behind a guy who kept telling him corny jokes and complimenting his attire.

Try as he might, he couldn’t remember any details about the man, only that he found him pleasant to listen to.

After work, it was back to the shopping plazas, and back through the woods towards the park.

When he slipped under the fence, he didn’t head for the castle, and instead veered towards one of the large clusters of buildings bordering the fantasy-area. There was an unremarkable door there, just as the internet had promised, and he’d brought the key.

Well, he brought a crowbar.

The frame in the side of the building barely tried to hold onto the door as the heavily-neglected metal work had had its strength rusted out. Virgil stepped aside as the door swung open, and peered into the darkness beyond.

Other than the scuttling of insects, the area inside was silent, and a click of his favorite flashlight revealed two sets of stairs leading down into further darkness.

Here I go then, he thought as he began to descend the stairs.

Just as the hallway into the castle had been, the tunnels were completely coated in dust and the floors carpeted in various forms of litter and debris.

There must have been thousands of park maps strewn across the walkways, and dozens of old employee information posters left barely clinging to the walls of the dark and desolate halls.

Virgil passed quietly by the occasional abandoned mini-vehicle or tall, wheeled laundry bin, sometimes pausing to peer through open doorways at empty spaces and discarded furniture.

Much of the trek was spent checking his phone, which still seemed to lose charge significantly faster whenever he was on park grounds, for the saved image of the utility tunnel map.

He still had quite a walk ahead of him when he rounded a corner and his flashlight’s beam fell upon the pale, tense man standing at the end of the next walkway.

-

Virgil’s heart dropped into his boots as he and the man stared, unmoving, at one another. He gradually took in the man’s appearance, trying to evaluate him as a threat.

The man wore black shoes and suspenders, with a dark blue dress shirt tucked into black slacks, while an untied black bow tie hung askew around his neck. His eyes were wide, almost wild, as he stared back at Virgil from behind thick, horn-rimmed black spectacles.

His attire wasn’t what kept Virgil speechless. It was his pale, translucent appearance and the haunted look in his eyes.

He was another ghost.

And now, he moved.

One minute, the man was standing there, simply watching him, albeit rather intensely.

The next, he was running towards Virgil at a completely unreasonable velocity, making his way towards the ghost hunter with terrifying speed.

The situation seemed completely unreal to Virgil, who remained frozen on the spot for a second, before jerking with a gasp and turning to run.

He’d only made it a few yards when he felt a wave of freezing air hit him from behind and his body dropped to its knees, before slumping limply onto its side.

Virgil watched, paralyzed, as his own body hit the floor and went still with him trapped inside of it. Horrified, he began struggling from within his mind, desperate to take back control of the organic matter around him. Where was the man now, what had he done?!

Then, he felt as if he were being pushed away from himself. The strange sensation of having his mentality forcibly shoved into the back of his own mind was disorienting, to say the least.

He lost all sense of self, time and space. His entire existence consisted only of the visuals and audio stimulus being offered to him by what parts of his body to which he maintained any connection.

Control, however, was out of the question.

His body began to cough weakly, then to laugh. The laughter started quietly but rapidly escalated in volume and force before it wound back down, warping itself into giggling and near-hysterical crying.

He watched himself rise from the floor and pat himself down, still laughing, still crying as he touched his hands to his shoulders and sides, then held his own face tearfully.

Suddenly, his body twitched and went silent. He saw himself turn and point his flashlight into the darkness of the tunnel.

Then, he took off running.

Virgil’s body sprinted down the hallway at a foolhardy speed, the flashlight beam dancing and flickering about wildly over debris and litter as he went.

His feet slid on the dusty tile floor when he recklessly rounded a corner and stopped, swaying.

Ahead of him was an enormous set of openings with several concrete ramps leading outside. Were Virgil actually coherent in this moment, he would recognize the place as an open delivery port.

His body sped off again, dashing madly for the openings ahead as his overworked muscles and lungs ached from exhaustion.

The openings drew closer and Virgil’s heartbeat escalated as he neared them. His legs forced themselves to run faster. It was as if everything depended on making it outside, no matter what the cost.

He was running at full speed when he reached the nearest opening and blacked out.


	5. Five

Virgil gradually realized he was conscious again as two very distracting facts registered in his mind and captured his freshly reset attention.

The first thing he noticed was that he felt as if he’d been hit by a bus. He was lying face-down on cool pavement, the warm wetness of blood pooling against one cheek. His entire body was consumed by ache, but his head was throbbing with the worst of it. He was afraid to move, unsure of what he might exacerbate, or whose attention he might catch.

Because second thing was that someone several feet behind him was alternating between full-on screaming and very, very quick speech.

_“No, NO!! Please, oh god no no–s-see guest relations for additional assist–WHAT do you WANT from me?! One–ONE–after the hundreds of insects–cockroaches are EASY, there’s almost no resistance–BUT THAT ISN’T ENOUGH FOR YOU–larger animals are more difficult–thaw to room temperature–the cat presented somewhat of a challenge–I MET that challenge, did I not?! I take EVERY opportunity you give me!”_

He listened, nauseous, and tried to get more of a feel for his situation while the voice continued.

Without moving, Virgil was able to tell that the right side of his face was stinging with what he would soon realize was road rash. His arms were underneath him, hands stinging as well, his legs bent at an awkward but not painful angle.

_“Nothing appeases, nothing changes–but there must be a method, there HAS TO BE A METHOD!!–fold in the butter and be wise not–why won’t you just show me what you want, I’ll DO ANYTHING–nnghh please PLEASE, just let me GO!!”_

Virgil shuddered as the agony in the person’s voice washed over him.

The voice quieted a little as it was interrupted by small sobs.

_“I-I don’t know, I don’t know what you want–I swear I’ve TRIED–if no brown sugar is available then two tablespoons of molasses per one cup of granulated–sshhowtimes are subject to change, please see a cast memb–please, please let me go–it should have WORKED!!”_

Shaking, Virgil slowly moved to push himself to sit up and look around him.

He’d been lying face-down on the rough, eroded pavement outside of the former delivery hub, several feet from the entrance from which his body had seemingly been launched.

The bespectacled man was on his knees on the floor just behind the frame, within the entryway. His hands gripped his head as he spoke rapidly, at times incoherently, seemingly to the very floor below him.

Virgil tried to put the pieces together. He’d come down into the tunnels and encountered this new, obviously very damaged spirit. Then what? His memories were so fuzzy after–right.

He kept still and observed the man for several moments, thinking.

The man continued his rambling and sobbing, silver tears streaming down his face, as Virgil tried to figure out what to do about the situation.

_“Oh god, what do I do? When will another one–for thirty minutes before baking–oh please, please…”_

Suddenly, the man’s form leapt up from the floor and he thrust himself forward as if trying to jump out of the entryway and towards Virgil.

Instead of landing on the pavement in front of him, however, the man seemed to hit an invisible barrier at the very edge of the opening which caused him to instantly dissipate into a burst of blue and silver smoke.

Virgil gasped.

The smoke swirled against the unseen barrier for a moment before rushing back, the man reappearing within the delivery bay with a tortured scream which echoed through the tunnels behind him.

The scream made Virgil flinch, and he then jerked back when the man began ramming himself repeatedly against the invisible barrier.

With each heavy impact, he vaporized, then reformed, looking more unstable and desperate each time.

_“Let me go, let me go, please let me GO, LET ME GO!!”_

Virgil didn’t take his eyes off of the heartbreaking scene as he slowly moved to his feet and gathered up his backpack.

He took a step closer to the man and called out, trying to snap him out of his breakdown, “Hey! What’s your name?”

The man didn’t respond but he did stop trying to ram through whatever was keeping him trapped there, at least for the moment. Now, he began pacing and speaking, both more rapidly than a live human would be capable, between either side of the entryway’s frame.

_“One-hundred and eight thousand, three-hundred and forty-seven–recounted thirty-seven times, the numbers are right, I know–you won’t let me–will not offer refunds in the event of inclement weather–see page sixty-six for our guide to perfect marinating..”_

Listening still, Virgil frowned to himself. What was he talking about?

“Hey, dude?” he tried again, stepping a little closer.

The man simply continued on, as if he hadn’t heard him.

However, an idea came to mind, and Virgil knelt carefully to paw through his backpack in search of what he hoped he hadn’t remembered to remove from it.

His fingers met the cool spine of the paperback and he withdrew it from his bag with chemical rush of success. He turned the book over, confirming the title, ‘The Zombie Survival Guide’ by Max Brooks.

The man had gone silent, frozen in place.

Virgil glanced up to see the man staring intensely at the tome in his hands now, like a starving person looking at a hot meal perched just out of their reach.

Heart pounding, he took a few more steps back towards the opening of the building, and offered the book out to him, making sure to pass it over the threshold so the unseen barrier wouldn’t cause an issue.

The man quietly stepped forward and gently took the book from him. He looked at the cover, opened it, and slowly allowed his lower body to wilt to the floor and sit as his attention was overtaken.

After several moments of silent, focused reading from the man, Virgil exhaled in relief and lifted a hand to absently swipe at a trail of blood running down his neck from his scraped cheek.

_Ah, right. I might need a hospital,_  he thought, unsure of how hard he’d hit the ground after the man’s unsuccessful possess-and-escape attempt had sent his body careening into the pavement.

Making a note to return here with as many books and magazines as he could carry, Virgil turned and walked back towards the woods, leaving the man to his reading.

 

\--

 

Virgil was diagnosed with a concussion at the emergency room, and advised not to drive himself home or go to work for a couple of days.

He was annoyed, having to eat into his savings, and rely on Uber to get him home and then back to his car sometime later. At least the days off of work would leave more time for him to return to the park and do whatever he could for the spirits there.

When the mercifully reticent Uber driver had dropped him off at his apartment, he dragged himself inside and muddled through the motions of putting together a sandwich.

The wide bandage on his cheek moved and pulled at his skin when he chewed.

After downing a couple of tylenol, he finished his meal while waking his laptop and returning once more to the internet.

The user who had responded to his call for information hadn’t replied to his last message on the forum, but had opted to send him a private message instead.

_“Subject: Found one_

_Message: My cousin’s wedding was happening in the ballroom that day. Here’s a clip from the video her sister took.  I’ll see what else I can find for you. Most of the video I have is very personal but this clip shows some of the people there, so I hope it helps. Let me know if the link works and please don’t repost this anywhere.”_

Below that was a link, which Virgil clicked before hurriedly pulling on his noise-cancelling headphones and plugging them in.

The link took him to a blurry video, very obviously recorded on a less-than-recent video camera. Probably one with actual tapes.

He watched as the person holding the camera sorted out their shot and focused on the faces of a young man and woman sitting at an elegantly decorated, circular table. They looked happy, if a bit tired, and were both dressed in colorful formal wear.

_“Heeey guys! What’d you think of the ceremony?”_  the camera’s handler asked.

The couple leaned against one another in unison and sighed in exhaustion, which caused the camera person to laugh.

_“Ohh, you know you loved it! When are you two gonna get this done, huh?”_

Now the couple looked at one another and laughed nervously. Their banter, meaningless to Virgil, continued throughout the video.

He peered into the background, trying to identify areas of the room and place them with his memories of how they looked presently, post-catastrophe.

Without warning, a hand swung into view, the bearer of which couldn’t have been standing more than twenty or so feet from the camera. All that could be seen of the person was a gleaming white and gold sleeve which extended to their wrist as they gestured grandly outwards across the room.

The familiarity of their strong, clear voice caused his heart to skip a beat.

_“Gather ‘round, my little lords and ladies!”_

That had to be Roman. The voice, the weirdly ostentatious accent, it just couldn’t be anyone else.

A slew of children scurried across the room and approached the speaker with excitement.

Virgil had to rewatch the video several times to clearly make out, transcribe, and eventually memorize everything most-likely-Roman had said over the conversation still taking place between the person holding the camera and the couple in the foreground.

_“Gather 'round, my little lords and ladies! Yes, come, come! How wonderful it is to see you all, and on such an incredible day, wouldn’t you say?”_

Here he paused, and the smaller children cheered loudly.

_“I am Prince Jude, second in line for the Starlight Kingdom throne, and I’m at your service. Shall we play a game? Yes?”_

Again, the smaller children cheered. Virgil could see a few of the older kids straggling further from the speaker, more in view of the camera, some likely following their younger siblings but keeping towards the outskirts of the group.

_“What should we play first, my friends?”_

The voices of the younger children all blended together into a tiny roar of excited suggestions, at which point the video ended.

Virgil sent a polite thank-you to the sender and confirmed that the link had been fine, and that he wouldn’t post it anywhere.

As exhausted as he had been upon arriving home, he was now wired, and stood to move around his apartment as his mind worked.

While he began almost absentmindedly grabbing up every book he owned and piling them on his bed, Virgil thought about Roman.

He had been an employee for Starlight Kingdom, a character actor for the role of Prince Jude. It seemed maybe he’d been assigned to keep kids busy at a wedding reception being hosted in the castle that day.

How unfortunate for him.

Before Virgil knew it, he’d gathered up several books: horror fictions, sci-fi anthologies, a book on behavioral therapy, and two empty notebooks.

With his remaining extra energy, he looked up trigger warnings for the books, and wrote them out at the open spaces at the top of each chapter.

Finally, he tucked the books and a few pens into a spare messenger bag and placed it by his front door.

Soon he would deliver the bag to the bespectacled man in the tunnels, assuming he could find him again. For now, despite his wishes, it was time for Virgil to sleep.

–

He’s driving. It’s so dark out.

If not for his headlights, the road ahead would be completely black. There are no other cars in sight.

Thick trees surround him on both sides and heavy, humid air streams in through the car windows.

The car itself is brand new, a 1963 Ford Falcon with a deep brown exterior, he’s happy to remember.

It’s a surprise and huge inconvenience when he feels and hears his front, driver’s-side tire burst and begin to deflate.

He pulls off to the side, keeping his headlights on and exiting his car into the thick swampland air. From the spacious trunk, he gathers his jack, tire iron, and spare tire.

Sweat is already beading on his forehead when he kneels by the flattened tire. He leans forward to properly place the jack underneath the frame of the car, before sitting up again to reach up and loosen his bow tie.

That’s the first time he feels the knife pierce him.

It dives into his side and through his kidney like a skewer, then slips back out just as quickly. He cries out and grabs for the wound.

The knife returns thrice more, perforating his lower back and sides.

He looks up to see the angry face of an older man glaring at him. The enraged, familiar man is holding his tire iron, swinging it towards him.

The tire iron meets the side of his head with excruciating force and all goes dark.

 

\--

 

The floor of the trunk vibrates beneath him with the rumbling of the engine fading into his resurfacing awareness. 

It’s sweltering in there.

His lower body and head are in excruciating pain. His clothes are soaked in his sweat and blood, his glasses shattered.

It’s ruining the interior, he realizes, with some indignation, through the thick haze of blood loss and head trauma.

Attempting to move results in fresh waves of agony. Growling through it, teeth clenched, he does his best to lift his bound wrists away from his lower back.

His fingertips graze the handle of the briefcase. The familiar scuff on the side is there.

If he can just get it open–

The terrain underneath the car changes suddenly and he’s bounced, quite painfully, when the wheels leave the smooth concrete of the main road and hit uneven gravel.

He recognizes the sound and suddenly  **knows** , oh  _god_ …!

The car accelerates.

He redoubles his efforts, straining for the briefcase again.

God, it _hurts_ , but he only has a few seconds before the car reaches the–

The brakes slam suddenly, and he’s thrown into the back of the seat separating him from the carriage of the vehicle, his vision flashing bright white through an explosion of pain.

–

Virgil could swear he saw a shower of stars glimmer out in the air in front of him as he came to from the latest nightmare, shaking and staring at his ceiling in the late afternoon. His heart was racing, and his head throbbed most unpleasantly.

Another, stronger dose of tylenol, then a few hours more of fitful, fragmented dozing, and he gave up on sleep entirely to crawl out of bed.

One shared ride later (thank the universe for noise-cancelling headphones), Virgil was back in his own car, and hitting the drive-through of one of the fast food places in the shopping plazas on the outskirts of the thick woods which surrounded the park. 

It would take a good forty-minute walk through the woods, choosing his path carefully through thick kudzu and plentiful trees to reach the delivery bay entrance of the tunnels.

The weather was finally starting to cool down and he decided to finish his fries there on the hood of his car, enjoying the light winds and listening to They Might Be Giants.

He thought about his dreams, and of the tortured man in the tunnels. If these nightmarish visions were memories, then Virgil must have been seeing his death, and it had not been pleasant.

How long ago had that been?

A tiny movement in the corner of his eye caught Virgil’s attention and he turned his head to see a small, slender, orange and white cat peering up at him from the line of bushes surrounding the parking lot.

The broad stripes of light orange through its white fur, tapering on either side of its body, reminded him vaguely of seafood.

“Hey,” he said, tugging his headphones down around his neck.

The cat continued to watch him.

Virgil withdrew a fry and tossed it to land about a foot away from the fluffy creature. He watched as the cat twitched back somewhat in response before slowly easing towards the fry to inspect it.

It licked the morsel a couple of times, before turning and promptly jumping from the ground to the hood of the car at Virgil’s feet.

His brows raised in surprise as it began to attack his bootlaces.

_Aren’t I the popular one lately_ , he thought.

“You don’t want fries, huh?” Virgil asked the little beast, which swatted and clawed at his boots still.

Thinking, he slowly withdrew his legs towards himself to cross them instead of having them outstretched towards the nose of the car. The cat tried to chase his boots to the underside of his knees.

When it reached his lap, the cat became instantly distracted with Virgil’s fingers and tried to nip at them instead.

He lifted his hands away and said, “Nah, you don’t want those either. Wait here.”

With that, he moved to slide off of the car hood, looking back in mild amusement at how the cat simply stayed put and watched him with a seemingly puzzled gaze.

It remained in place, as Virgil hoped it would, while he purchased a fish sandwich from inside the restaurant, only moving to hop down and run towards him when he exited with the food.

With the feline rubbing its sides against his ankles, he placed the sandwich on his car and deconstructed it, finally presenting the now loudly-meowing animal with a decent helping of meat placed on the sandwich’s wrapper.

He situated this makeshift plate, along with a very full cup of water, on the ground where the bushes curved around the corner of the parking lot. Along with his car, this would help to conceal the feasting kitty from any unfriendly visitors.

“Stay out of the road,” Virgil said to the cat as he removed both his backpack and the messenger bag from the back seat, and readied himself for another long walk through the woods.

The cat ignored him entirely now, in favor of the food and water it’d been given.

He hoped it might still be around when he got back.


	6. Chapter 6

Virgil approached the delivery bay entrance to the tunnels and peered around carefully, turning on his flashlight and sending its beam into the darkness within.

The bespectacled man was nowhere to be seen, nor was the book Virgil had given him the night before.

Quietly, Virgil stepped through the entry way and began moving through the tunnels. He considered calling out for the man, but wasn’t sure of what to call him by exactly.

_Heere, scary-fast ghost guy,_  he thought, although he was actually pretty apprehensive about seeing him again.

Being forcibly possessed and thrown several feet onto bare cement hadn’t exactly been a fun experience.

Something else on Virgil’s mind was the fact that scary-fast ghost guy had had more of a “traditional” ghostly form, in that he could clearly see and make out details of his translucent appearance, down to the aching desperation in his expression.

Roman, however, seemed to be made entirely of shadow. No details of his appearance could be made out other than the general shape of him, and of course those glowing red eyes.

Virgil wondered why this was, and considered that perhaps it had something to do with the fire surrounding the circumstances of Roman’s death.

Had he burned alive?

He shuddered at the thought–and then froze.

There was a sound rapidly approaching from behind, like someone had been running up to him and was now trotting to a halt, only the footsteps were still much too fast and much too close.

Virgil spun and reflexively swung out with his flashlight.

He locked eyes with the bespectacled man, who seemed to instantly look to his flashlight and then step back and out of the way before Virgil could complete his swing.

His speed was still very jarring and Virgil stared at him a bit tensely for a moment, waiting to see what he would do next. 

_“I had planned to confirm that you’re able to see me, but I suppose that answers that,_ ” the man said, eyeing Virgil.

Stunned, Virgil just nodded a little, staring back at him with somewhat widened eyes.

“S-sorry,” he said, composing himself and breathing hard still.

There was a pause, as neither of them seemed to know what to do at this point. Then, the man extended a pale hand towards Virgil.

_“I’m Logan Curtis, and I’d like to apologize for taking control of and subsequently damaging your body.”_

Virgil stared at his hand a bit tensely for a moment before reaching to take it, feeling the freezing cold of it through his glove.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I think I get it. I’m Virgil. Good to meet you.”

Logan seemed to relax a little and he peered at Virgil as he gently released his hand.

“ _What were your injuries?”_  he asked, his tone much more even and grounded than it had been during their previous encounter, Virgil noticed.

He murmured his concussion diagnosis to him, feeling a bit guilty when Logan grimaced.

_“I, uh.. Again, I apologize for–”_

“Really, it’s okay.”

Virgil could see Logan was still somewhat uncomfortable, but didn’t get a chance to try reassuring him again before Logan changed the subject.

_“What are you doing down here?”_  he asked.

“Well, I was ghost-hunting but now I guess I’m just.. ghost-visiting?” said Virgil.

Logan quirked an eyebrow.

Virgil just slipped the messenger bag off of his shoulder and offered it to him, saying, “Here, these are for you.”

There was a moment wherein Logan didn’t seem to understand what he was saying and simply stared down at the offered bag blankly. Then, he took it and crouched on the floor to look through its contents.

He gasped softly and began filing through the books, reading the titles out loud to himself with increasing excitement.

Virgil smiled a bit, feeling very Santa.

Logan found the pens and slipped one behind his right ear, keeping the other tucked between the first two fingers of his left hand.

The empty notebooks seemed to come as a particular blessing and he unabashedly hugged them both to his chest before tucking those and the other books carefully back into the bag. He kept the book on behavioral therapy out and clutched to himself.

He said,  _“I can’t thank you enough for these, Virgil, this is truly a gift. After years of reading and re-reading thousands of copies of the same park map, and that useless cookbook, I’m afraid I simply can’t express what this means to me. Really, thank you.”_

Virgil realized that something about Logan’s manner of speaking reminded him of old episodes of The Twilight Zone.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, feeling a little embarrassed to be on the receiving end of such a show of emotional gratitude. “Do you know how long you’ve been down here?”

Logan had flipped open the book in his right hand and was scanning the first few pages of it with his left, the pen still tucked between his fingers as he used his thumb to flip the pages.

_“That would depend on what the year is now,”_  he said, not looking up but raising his left wrist as he began examining the index of the book.

Virgil was a little nervous to inform him but didn’t hesitate, knowing he deserved to know.

“It’s 2018.”

He watched for Logan’s reaction and saw him flinch subtly.

_“Then.. fifty-four years, I suppose.”_

Virgil stiffened and then turned away, not wanting to expose Logan to his horrified expression full on.

_The park didn’t even exist back then_ , he realized sickly.

That explained a  _lot_. 

Logan noticed, but pretended not to, scanning through the first few pages of his chosen tome for now.

After a moment, when Virgil had recovered, he turned back to Logan and blurted, “Hey, you know your way around here, right?”

The expression on Logan’s face as he lifted his gaze to Virgil was an attempt at deadpan but obviously concealing quite a bit of exasperation.

_“Yes.”_

_\--_

Logan cocked his head slightly in confusion.

_“Why would you want to go to the castle?”_  he asked.

Virgil sighed and said, “There’s another ghost inside. I need to talk to him, and I’m pretty sure he needs some help.”

After a pause to consider his request, Logan nodded and placed the messenger bag on a nearby chair, setting it down carefully.

_“Alright then, follow me,”_  he said then, turning to walk away from him though not so quickly that Virgil had any trouble keeping up.

“You’re not gonna tell me to go away, because I might get hurt?” Virgil asked, tagging along after him.

Logan popped the book back open in his right hand, easily finding his way through the tunnel while looking through the pages. His left hand kept lifting away from the pages, the pen he still held tucked between his first two fingertips.

He asked,  _“What would be the point in telling you that? You’ve already gotten hurt and it obviously hasn’t deterred you.”_

Virgil appreciated him coming to this conclusion on his own.

Continuing, Logan said, _“After what you’ve done for me, the least I could do would be to escort you towards the castle safely and efficiently. I’ve got no other means by which to thank you, after all.”_

“I appreciate it,” Virgil assured him.

Logan nodded, keeping his gaze on the book’s pages and absently flicking his thumb once against the bottom of the pen in first two fingers of his left hand. He then brought the pen to his lips, pursing them, and paused before pulling it away again.  

For a moment he just looked at the pen, frowning somewhat to himself, before deciding to slip it into his pocket instead.

This did not go unnoticed by Virgil, who said nothing.

_“Why do you own such a book, Virgil?”_  Logan asked, lifting the cognitive behavioral therapy book in his hand for indication.

Still watching him, Virgil glanced at the cover of the book, then away a bit quickly before responding, “I needed it.”

After a moment to consider his answer, Logan nodded again, and decided not to press him about it.

_“Fair enough.”_

Virgil appreciated this as well.

_“What do you know about this spirit you’ll be visiting?”_  asked Logan, his gaze back on the book’s pages, left hand in his pocket now, looking to be fidgeting with the pen there.

Sighing, Virgil thought about how to answer that.

“I’m pretty sure he was an employee. He was playing some prince character and working a wedding reception, keeping a bunch of kids busy, on the day of the explosion–you know about that, right…?” he asked uncertainly, pausing in his explanation.

Logan nodded once more without looking up.

_“I do remember that day, yes.”_

“Alright, so… I don’t know how he died yet, but it must have been the fire or more of the castle collapsing, because he’s in the big, um… rectangular room.”

_“The ballroom.”_

“Right, thanks.” Virgil paused again. “How much do you know about the park?”

_“Anything that hasn’t been changed since its construction, and most modifications after that. I’ve never visited, of course, as I’m unable to leave these **godforsaken**  catacombs–preset oven to three-hundred f–”_ Logan stopped moving and sighed heavily, reaching up to rub his eyes beneath his glasses for a moment.

Virgil said nothing, but wanted to apologize for asking.

Soon, and abruptly, Logan continued walking and speaking, albeit somewhat faster this time. Virgil had to speed up his pace as well to match his.

_“For the entirety of the park’s operation, I was privy to any and all information so long as it was accessible from within these utility tunnels. This included books, newspapers, employee information guides and flyers, radio feeds, passing gossip–oh, and the computers…”_  He gave a deep, longing sigh.  _“I’d love to see one of those again.”_

Virgil considered his smartphone, but knew the battery was draining fast, as it always did on park grounds. He needed it to stay on until he got back to the shopping plaza, at least.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, already thinking about ways to bring Logan a reliable source of data.

Logan smiled a little but seemed to be trying not to get his hopes up.

_“Thank you.”_

–

They soon reached a door, the placard of which had been broken off. Logan gestured to it with his free hand, still using the other to hold open the book.

_“We’ll need to go this way, but opening the door may prove difficult.”_

Virgil withdrew his crowbar from his backpack and got to work.

As they both winced through the high-pitched shrieks of the unwilling metal, Virgil wrenched and pulled against the crowbar until the door popped out of its frame and slammed loudly to the floor.

Logan rushed to appear behind Virgil in a near-instant to keep him on his feet when the weight he’d put into his efforts almost sent him toppling over with the door’s release.

Guided back to his center of gravity by one chilly hand pushing against his back, Virgil righted himself and thanked him. Logan’s unusual speed was slowly becoming less startling.

Through this doorway was another tunnel, this one taller and slightly more narrow, and stretching out into a seemingly endless extension of darkness.

Dozens of pipes, varying in size, ran alongside the walls and overhead. The sound of dripping water could be heard throughout the place.

_“I assume you know to watch your step, Virgil,”_ said Logan as they entered.

“Yeah.”

After a cautious few minutes of walking, with Virgil constantly scanning the ground with his flashlight and Logan never looking away from the book, they reached an open staircase.

It was attached to the right side of the wall, with twelve steps leading up to a landing which hosted another unmarked door.

Logan ushered Virgil towards the staircase.

_“I cannot follow you from this point, but I’ll wait here for your return.”_

Virgil nodded in understanding and listened carefully as Logan continued, taking efforts to slow down his rapid speech.

_“The castle is separated at the floor level by the open walkway. One side houses the ballroom and entertainment workings, the other holds an expansive kitchen and catering preparation area. This route will take you to the latter. You’ll need to go up two more flights of stairs to reach the castle level. From there, you’ll take the door to your left to enter the catering hallway. Follow that hallway to the very opposite end and the exit there will land you just outside of the castle entrance, by the archway. Reenter the castle through the archway and the ballroom will be to your left.”_

He paused to confirm that Virgil understood, watching as he seemed to mouth the directions back to himself briefly before responding.

“Two flights of stairs, then a door to the left. Go through and all the way down the hall to the exit. Go outside, and the ballroom is to the left from the archway,” Virgil said, not looking at Logan as he was envisioning his route.

Logan nodded then and watched Virgil begin to climb the stairs.

_“Good luck,”_  he offered quietly.

Virgil sighed and thanked him, knowing he would likely need it at some point soon.

 

\--

 

The door at the top of the stairs squeaked open with some persuasion from Virgil’s crowbar, and he soon found himself in another gloomy, silent stairwell.

From there he moved carefully up two grime-laden flights of steps and ended up at a landing wherein the stairs continued upwards, and as promised, there was a doorway to his left. The door had been removed from its frame and he could see through it to the murkiness of the connecting hallway.

Following Logan’s directions, Virgil walked through the doorway and made his way through the darkened corridor.

There were no doors on the right side, but several on the left, all seeming to connect to the same wide, open space where a massive kitchen and prep area had once been. It likely hadn’t looked as much like an expansive mortuary as it did now, back when it was full of equipment and workers.

Many metallic surfaces, sinks and shelves remained where they had been attached to the walls, only making the place look even more like a morgue to him. Along the opposite wall stood a line of decommissioned walk-in freezers, most with their doors open, or at least partially removed, and each housing their own pockets of concentrated darkness.

Looking at them gave Virgil the feeling that something was watching him from the shadows, far across that creepy, empty expanse of dusty tile. He walked a little faster to reach the end of the hall.

Waiting there was the exit door, and that popped open with some resistance when Virgil leaned into the lockbar across the middle.

Then he was outside, overgrown brush and the broad side of the decorative archway of the castle entrance hiding him for the moment.

Virgil stepped carefully around where the archway met the ground and made his way onto the walkway which ran through the castle.  From that end of it he was able to see the opening Roman had made in the wall a few days before to his left. He quietly approached it, peering through it as he neared.

His eyes scanned the room carefully but didn’t spot the familiar silhouette until he glanced upwards upon recalling Roman’s ability to hover.

Roman was there, perched on a broken beam which extended out horizontally from the undamaged side of the castle and into the remains of the ballroom.

He had his knees tucked to his chest, as far as Virgil could tell, with his head down and his upper body curled over himself somewhat as he clutched his shoulders. His eyes were completely obscured by the shadow forming him; closed, it seemed.

Virgil watched him silently for a few moments, realizing with an odd stir of emotions that Roman’s hands seemed to be pulsing somewhat against his shoulders as if he was squeezing them.

He was using the same calming technique Virgil had used during their first face-to-face encounter. At least, he was attempting to do so.

Among other things, this was worrisome to Virgil.

Softly, he called out, “Roman.”

The silhouette went still completely. Glowing red rubies appeared again when Roman opened his eyes and turned his head to look down at Virgil silently.

They watched one another, and Roman sighed as he lowered his legs to allow his feet to dangle from the beam, sitting upright.

_“Well, let’s hear it. What are you doing here again?”_

He spoke in a voice so jarringly, genuinely exhausted that Virgil briefly grew very anxious about the idea that he’d become physically ill somehow.

Then, you know, he remembered.

Before Virgil could respond, Roman spread his arms slightly in a gesture of confusion and asked,  _“And **how**  in the world did you get here this time?”_

Virgil walked into the ballroom, taking a deep breath before responding.

“I’m here for the same reason as the last time. You need help and no one else has delivered, maybe no one else will. Do yourself a favor and get used to the fact that I’m not giving up or going away,” he said.

Roman seemed to scowl somewhat, though it was always hard to tell.

Quickly, Virgil continued, “And, y'know, I get that sometimes you just need to be alone and feel bad about things. But it’s been twenty years, dude, and honestly you owe it to yourself to try and move on. I don’t know if that means passing over or whatever, and I know the unknown can be terrifying, but you can’t keep doing whatever this is to yourself forever.”

No response came from Roman yet as he continued to watch Virgil for the moment.

Virgil added, “I mean, I don’t know for sure that you couldn’t technically do it forever, I don’t really know how this all works. But you know what I’m getting at. Get used to the idea that I could help you and you deserve to be helped.”

Roman looked away.

“Oh, and I got here by following directions from another ghost down in the utility tunnels. His name’s Logan and I think we’re friends at this point,” concluded Virgil.

An expression like a grimace caused Roman’s eyes to squint somewhat in what seemed like sympathy.

_“How many spirits have you met in this park, Virgil?”_  he asked, a bit more softly.

“Logan’s the third. You were the first.”

_“I see..”_  Roman sighed and tilted his head, then asked, _“And what will you do if I continue to refuse your help?”_

Virgil took a moment to think before replying, “I’ll spend a lot of time coming to try and see you still.”

Roman looked back to him, eyes seeming to glower at him now.

_**“Why?”** _

The sudden intensity of his voice made Virgil jump slightly and he faltered, trying to formulate his response.

_“Have you got any idea how exhausting it was to collapse those bridges? To catch you out of the air–to keep saving you from the stupid mistakes you’re making?!”_  Roman fumed.

Virgil pursed his lips slightly.

He said, “I’m grateful for you saving me. Honestly. That stuff is on me. But I didn’t ask you to break the bridges. That one was all you.”

Roman tensed and Virgil thought he could see the shadows of his body flaring and undulating around him like flames, though the darkness of the area made it almost impossible to tell.

_“Why is it that you insist on spending your time with spirits, anyway? Do the living find you **so**  intolerable that you’ve got to come here for company? To intrude on the dead, who can’t escape you?”_

Now it was Virgil’s turn not to respond. The remarks stung, but he continued listening to see where Roman would go with this.

After a moment of getting no reaction from Virgil, Roman tensely continued, asking,  _“How is it you think you’re capable of helping anyone when you’re so **pathetic**  you can scarcely keep yourself ali–”_

Virgil lifted a hand, silencing him.

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Virgil said, lowering his hand to rub his eyes. “You can cut the whole Shoo the Dog, Harry and the Hendersons act because I’m not buying it.”

Roman’s eyes seemed to have softened in his confusion.

_“The what?”_

“I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of movies, you know what I’m talking about. The whole trope where you attack my self-worth and insult me so that I’ll leave you ‘for my own good,’” Virgil said, rolling his eyes through air quotes. “You can go ahead and cancel that whole mess, because it’s not what I ordered.”

For the time being, Roman was stunned and had nothing to say in response.

Virgil went on, saying, “Listen, I get that you’ve been alone for a long time, so long that it’s scary to try and get used to the idea of letting yourself be helped. But know that help is available to you, and I’m willing to give you time to think about what you want to do with that.”

Tenseness fading, Roman sighed.

“Just, please. Really think about giving yourself this chance,” Virgil said.

Roman was still and silent for another couple of moments before lying back on the beam underneath him, looking somehow even more fatigued. He seemed to stare out at the sky through the open, destroyed ceiling above them.

He finally said,  _“I’ll need to take some time to think.”_

Virgil exhaled in relief. This was a start.

“Okay,” he replied. “Then I’ll go for now, and I’ll try to come back tomorrow night.”

Roman nodded without looking at him and lifted a hand to send a dismissive, shooing motion his way.

Virgil left then, albeit reluctantly, knowing Roman could easily figure out how he’d gotten there and find a way to destroy that route as well. This could have been an act in order to get rid of him and continue trying to keep him out, but he just wouldn’t know for sure until his next visit.

He rejoined Logan in the tunnels and asked him to lead him then towards the fantasy-themed area, to whichever staircase would exit him closest to the boat ride.

 

\--

 

_“How was your visit?”_  Logan asked, looking Virgil over for signs of further injury as they began towards the tunnels under the fantasy area of the park.

“I guess I’m not sure yet, but it wasn’t the worst it could’ve gone. We’re gonna have to wait and see what he decides to do now,” murmured Virgil before taking another dose of mild painkillers with a bottle of water.

Returning his gaze to the book in his hand, Logan asked mildly,  _“Just how often will I be seeing you here?”_

Virgil shrugged.

“As often as I can get away with it, I guess. I don’t have much else going on. Just work.”

_“Oh? What’s your occupation?”_

“Forklift operator, at a warehouse across town.”

Logan glanced up from his book briefly, then back to it, thinking.

_“I see. I hope it’s a safe facility,”_  he said.

Virgil’s head tilted slightly in concern and curiosity.

He said, truthfully, "It is, yeah.”

Logan seemed to be considering saying something else on the subject, while Virgil waited quietly for him to do so, but he ended up refraining.

Instead, he changed the topic, and began explaining to Virgil how best to navigate his way to the boat-ride queue from where they would part.

Before long, they had arrived at another elevated door through which Logan couldn’t pass. He waited, while Virgil climbed the steps and pried open the door to make his way up the stairs inside.

At the top of the stairs was a landing and a walkway leading forward into a narrow, low-ceiling corridor. Outside the stairwell was a door to Virgil’s right, and following Logan’s directions, he pushed it open and stepped through into a truly tragic scene.

Nearly everywhere he looked were toddler-sized animatronics left to mutate into grotesque, inanimate little ghouls.

Their once colorful clothes had faded and rotted, and most of their happy cherub faces had begun to peel away from the mechanics underneath. Many of them were missing eyes and their formerly jubilant body language had been warped with time, leaving them hunched over themselves and their props like miniature zombies, lazily imitating life.

Virgil had to step carefully through one of the macabre sets, avoiding the humanoid horrors, to reach the drained, curving trench of a track that once carried small boats full of sunburnt tourists. Spider webs of various sizes blanketed much of the scenery and Virgil once more tugged his hoodie over his hair, just to be safe.

Immediately upon entering the area, he could hear the voice of the crying spirit from before as it carried sadly from the somewhere far ahead of him.

It was the most pitiful rendition of Funkytown he’d ever heard.

The spirit half-moaned their way through the majority of the repetitive lyrics, sounding much like a miserable drunk at a karaoke bar. Virgil could tell they were crying again, or likely very close to it. They didn’t even seem to know all of the words and sort of mumbled through many of them.

He followed the voice further down the track, passing his flashlight beam over the remnants of gears and conveyor belts between the many puddles along the track itself.

One of the scenes through which he passed consisted of dozens of filth-laden masks posted across the walls. The darkness lingering behind their hollow eyes and gaping mouths made Virgil’s skin crawl and he moved a little more quickly onward.

He was entering a smaller chamber, with dozens of farewells written in different languages on deteriorating panels and signs, when he spotted the familiar platform of the line area. Finally, he’d reached the end of this unintentional house of horrors.

The voice stopped singing very suddenly, only to be heard again a moment later, speaking to him anxiously.

_“Whoa, you need to come out of there, buddy! Quick, come this way, it’s not safe in there!”_

Virgil paused to register what was being said, then scurried on forward to exit the chamber and make his way into the enormous room housing the queue area, towards the sound of the voice.

_“Are you okay? Did you get lost? What were you doing in there in the dark like that?”_

The voice continued speaking and Virgil tried to form his answers as he gazed around for the source of it.

“I’m okay,” he said into the open room. “I wasn’t lost, I just used another path to come and see you. There are tunnels under here that connect to different areas of the park.”

Virgil hoisted himself up out of the track and onto the floor, dusting himself off as he stood.

While he did this, the voice continued fretting.

_“Please don’t use that way any more, kiddo, there could be snakes or just about anything in there.”_

“Alright,” Virgil said. “I won’t. Thanks.”

He would need to use one of the external doors out in the park walkways to reenter the tunnels, and he hoped it wouldn’t take him too long to find Logan again from there.

A sigh of relief seemed to emanate from the room itself before the voice spoke again.

_“Good. And thanks for coming back! So, what’s your name?”_

“Virgil, and y–”

_“How are you, Virgil? That’s a really great name! How old are you?”_

“Fine–thanks–uh, I’m twenty-nine–”

_“A fantastic age to be!”_

“Yeah, what’s–”

_“When I turned twenty-nine I ate an entire sheet cake by myself! Hahaha, I got sick for days!”_

Virgil smiled a little. This person was obviously very excited to have company now. He wondered why they had been upset before.

Though, under these circumstances, he imagined they had plenty of reasons.

“What’s your name?” he asked them as their laughter, the source of which was still impossible to locate, died down.

_“Oh, you can call me Patton!”_

“Cool to meet you, Patton.”

_“Thanks! Oh, by the way, have you seen a little cat anywhere?”_


End file.
